On July 9, 1958, an unusually severe disaster occurred in Lituya Bay in southeastern Alaska. A strong earthquake occurred on the Fairweather fault, causing the destruction of buildings, the collapse of the coast, and the formation of numerous cracks. And a huge landslide on the mountainside above the bay caused a wave of a record height of 524 m, which swept at a speed of 160 km/h across the narrow, fjord-like bay.
“After the first shock, I fell out of bed and looked towards the beginning of the bay, where the noise was coming from. The mountains trembled terribly, stones and avalanches rushed down. And the glacier in the north was especially striking; it is called the Lituya glacier. It is usually not visible from where I was anchored. People shake their heads when I tell them that I saw him that night. I can't help it if they don't believe me. I know that the glacier is not visible from where I was anchored in Anchorage Bay, but I also know that I saw it that night. The glacier rose into the air and moved forward until it became visible. He must have risen several hundred feet. I'm not saying it was just hanging in the air. But he was shaking and jumping like crazy. Large pieces of ice fell from its surface into the water. The glacier was six miles away, and I saw large chunks falling off it like a huge dump truck. This continued for some time - it is difficult to say how long - and then suddenly the glacier disappeared from view and a large wall of water rose above this place. The wave went in our direction, after which I was too busy to say what else was happening there.”
Lituya is a fjord located on the Fairweather fault in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. It is a T-shaped bay 14 kilometers long and up to three kilometers wide. The maximum depth is 220 m. The narrow entrance to the bay is only 10 m deep. Two glaciers descend into Lituya Bay, each of which is about 19 km long and up to 1.6 km wide. During the century preceding the events described, waves over 50 meters high had already been observed in Lituya several times: in 1854, 1899 and 1936.
The 1958 earthquake caused a subaerial rockfall at the mouth of the Gilbert Glacier in Lituya Bay. This landslide caused more than 30 million cubic meters of rock to fall into the bay and create a megatsunami. This disaster killed 5 people: three on Hantaak Island and two more were washed away by a wave in the bay. In Yakutat, the only permanent settlement near the epicenter, infrastructure was damaged: bridges, docks and oil pipelines.
After the earthquake, a study was carried out of a subglacial lake located northwest of the bend of the Lituya Glacier at the very beginning of the bay. It turned out that the lake dropped by 30 meters. This fact served as the basis for another hypothesis of the formation of a giant wave more than 500 meters high. Probably, during the glacier's descent, a large volume of water entered the bay through an ice tunnel under the glacier. However, the runoff of water from the lake could not be the main cause of the megatsunami.
A huge mass of ice, stones and earth (volume of about 300 million cubic meters) rushed down from the glacier, exposing the mountain slopes. The earthquake destroyed numerous buildings, cracks appeared in the ground, and the coastline slid. The moving mass fell on the northern part of the bay, filled it up, and then crawled onto the opposite slope of the mountain, tearing off the forest cover from it to a height of more than three hundred meters. The landslide generated a giant wave that literally swept Lituya Bay towards the ocean. The wave was so great that it swept entirely over the entire sandbank at the mouth of the bay.
Eyewitnesses to the disaster were people on board the ships that dropped anchor in the bay. The terrible shock threw them all out of their beds. Jumping to their feet, they could not believe their eyes: the sea rose. “Giant landslides, raising clouds of dust and snow in their path, began to run along the slopes of the mountains. Soon their attention was attracted by an absolutely fantastic sight: the mass of ice of the Lituya glacier, located far to the north and usually hidden from view by the peak that rises at the entrance to the bay, seemed to rise above the mountains and then majestically collapsed into the waters of the inner bay. It all seemed like some kind of nightmare. Before the eyes of the shocked people, a huge wave rose up and swallowed the foot of the northern mountain. After that, she swept across the bay, tearing trees off the mountain slopes; falling like a water mountain onto the island of Cenotaph... rolled over the highest point of the island, rising 50 m above sea level. This entire mass suddenly plunged into the waters of the narrow bay, causing a huge wave, the height of which apparently reached 17-35 m. Its energy was so great that the wave rushed furiously across the bay, sweeping the slopes of the mountains. In the inner basin, the impact of the waves on the shore was probably very strong. The slopes of the northern mountains facing the bay were bare: where there had once been dense forest there were now bare rocks; This pattern was observed at altitudes of up to 600 meters.
One longboat was lifted high, easily carried across the sandbar and dropped into the ocean. At that moment, when the longboat was carried over the sandbank, the fishermen on it saw standing trees beneath them. The wave literally threw people across the island into the open sea. During a nightmare ride on a giant wave, the boat pounded against trees and debris. The longboat sank, but the fishermen miraculously survived and were rescued two hours later. Of the other two longboats, one safely withstood the wave, but the other sank, and the people on it went missing.
Miller found that the trees growing at the upper edge of the exposed area, just below 600 m above the bay, were bent and broken, their fallen trunks pointing towards the top of the mountain, but the roots were not torn from the soil. Something pushed these trees up. The enormous force that accomplished this could not be anything other than the top of a gigantic wave that swept over the mountain on that July evening in 1958.”
Mr. Howard J. Ulrich, in his yacht, which is called "Edri", entered the waters of Lituya Bay about eight in the evening and anchored in nine meters of water in a small cove on the southern shore. Howard says that suddenly the yacht began to rock violently. He ran out onto the deck and saw how in the northeastern part of the bay the rocks began to move due to the earthquake and a huge block of rock began to fall into the water. About two and a half minutes after the earthquake, he heard a deafening sound from the destruction of rock.
“We definitely saw that the wave came from Gilbert Bay, just before the earthquake ended. But at first it was not a wave. At first it was more like an explosion, as if the glacier was splitting into pieces. The wave grew from the surface of the water, at first it was almost invisible, who would have thought that then the water would rise to a height of half a kilometer.”
Ulrich said that he observed the entire process of development of the wave, which reached their yacht in a very short time - something like two and a half to three minutes from the time it could first be noticed. “Since we didn’t want to lose the anchor, we pulled out the entire anchor chain (about 72 meters) and started the engine. Halfway between the northeastern edge of Lituya Bay and Cenotaf Island, a thirty-meter-high wall of water could be seen that stretched from one shore to the other. When the wave approached the northern part of the island, it split into two parts, but after passing the southern part of the island, the wave became one again. It was smooth, only there was a small ridge on top. When this mountain of water approached our yacht, its front was quite steep and its height was from 15 to 20 meters. Before the wave arrived at the place where our yacht was located, we did not feel any drop in the water or other changes, with the exception of a slight vibration that was transmitted through the water from the tectonic processes that began to operate during the earthquake. As soon as the wave approached us and began to lift our yacht, the anchor chain crackled violently. The yacht was carried towards the southern shore and then, on the reverse course of the wave, towards the center of the bay. The top of the wave was not very wide, from 7 to 15 meters, and the trailing front was less steep than the leading one.
As the giant wave swept past us, the surface of the water returned to its normal level, but we could see a lot of turbulence around the yacht, as well as random waves six meters high that moved from one side of the bay to the other. These waves did not create any noticeable movement of water from the mouth of the bay to its northeastern part and back.”
After 25-30 minutes the surface of the bay calmed down. Near the banks one could see many logs, branches and uprooted trees. All this rubbish slowly drifted towards the center of Lituya Bay and towards its mouth. In fact, during the entire incident, Ulrich did not lose control of the yacht. When the Edri approached the entrance to the bay at 11 pm, a normal current could be observed there, which is usually caused by the daily ebb of ocean water.
Other eyewitnesses to the disaster, the Swenson couple on a yacht called the Badger, entered Lituya Bay around nine in the evening. First, their ship approached Cenotaf Island, and then returned to Anchorage Bay on the northern shore of the bay, not far from its mouth (see map). The Svensons anchored at a depth of about seven meters and went to bed. William Swenson's sleep was interrupted by strong vibrations from the yacht's hull. He ran to the control room and began to time what was happening. A little over a minute after William first felt the vibration, and probably just before the end of the earthquake, he looked towards the northeastern part of the bay, which was visible against the backdrop of Cenotaph Island. The traveler saw something that he initially mistook for the Lituya glacier, which rose into the air and began to move towards the observer. “It seemed like this mass was solid, but it jumped and swayed. Large pieces of ice were constantly falling into the water in front of this block.” After a short time, “the glacier disappeared from sight, and instead of it a large wave appeared in that place and went in the direction of the La Gaussi spit, just where our yacht was anchored.” In addition, Svenson noticed that the wave flooded the shore at a very noticeable height.
When the wave passed Cenotaf Island, its height was about 15 meters in the center of the bay and gradually decreased near the shores. She passed the island approximately two and a half minutes after she was first seen, and reached the yacht Badger another eleven and a half minutes (approximately). Before the wave arrived, William, like Howard Ulrich, did not notice any drop in water level or any turbulent phenomena.
The yacht "Badger", which was still at anchor, was lifted by a wave and carried towards the La Gaussie spit. The stern of the yacht was below the crest of the wave, so that the position of the vessel resembled a surfboard. Svenson looked at that moment at the place where the trees growing on the La Gaussy spit should have been visible. At that moment they were hidden by water. William noted that above the tops of the trees there was a layer of water equal to approximately two times the length of his yacht, about 25 meters. Having passed the La Gaussi spit, the wave subsided very quickly.
In the place where Swenson's yacht was moored, the water level began to drop, and the ship hit the bottom of the bay, remaining afloat not far from the shore. 3-4 minutes after the impact, Swenson saw that water continued to flow over the La Gaussie Spit, carrying logs and other debris from forest vegetation. He wasn't sure it wasn't a second wave that could have carried the yacht across the spit into the Gulf of Alaska. Therefore, the Swenson couple left their yacht, moving onto a small boat, from which they were picked up by a fishing boat a couple of hours later.
There was a third vessel in Lituya Bay at the time of the incident. It was anchored at the entrance to the bay and was sunk by a huge wave. None of the people on board survived; two were believed to have died.
What happened on July 9, 1958? That evening, a huge rock fell into the water from a steep cliff overlooking the northeastern shore of Gilbert Bay. The collapse area is marked in red on the map. The impact of an incredible mass of stones from a very high altitude caused an unprecedented tsunami, which wiped out from the face of the earth all life that was located along the entire coast of Lituya Bay right up to the La Gaussi spit. After the wave passed along both shores of the bay, there was not only no vegetation left, but even no soil; there was bare rock on the surface of the shore. The damaged area is shown in yellow on the map.
The numbers along the shore of the bay indicate the height above sea level of the edge of the damaged land area and approximately correspond to the height of the wave that passed here.
You read the memoirs of the siege survivors and understand that those people, with their heroic lives, deserved free education and medicine, and various clubs, and free 6 acres and much more. deserve it and with their labor they built that life for themselves and for us.
And the generations who have not seen such war and such a national woe, they wanted chewing gum, rock and jeans, freedom of speech and sex. And their descendants are lace panties, pederasty and “like in Europe.”
Lidiya Mikhailovna Smorodina/Siege of Leningrad. Memories
- How did the war begin for you?
I have a photograph taken on the first day of the war, my mother wrote it (shows)
I graduated from school, we were going to the dacha and went to Nevsky to take pictures, they bought me a new dress.
We drove back and couldn’t understand - there were crowds of people standing at the loudspeakers, something had happened.
And when we entered the courtyard, the men liable for military service were already being taken into the army. At 12 o'clock Moscow time it was announced, and the mobilization of the first conscription had already begun.
Even before September 8 (the start date of the siege of Leningrad), things became very alarming, drills were announced from time to time, and the food supply became worse.
I immediately noticed this, because I was the eldest of the children in the family, my sister was not yet six years old, my brother was four years old, and the youngest was only a year old. I already went to the bread line; I was thirteen and a half years old in 1941.
The first wild bombing took place on September 8 at 16:55, they were bombed mainly with incendiary bombs. They went through all our apartments, all adults and teenagers (they write that from the age of sixteen, but in fact also twelve years old) were forced to go out into the courtyard to the barns, into the attic, onto the roof.
By this time, sand and water had already been prepared in boxes. Water, of course, was not needed, because in water these bombs hissed and did not go out.
We had partitions in the attic, everyone has their own small attic, so in June-July all these partitions were broken for fire safety.
And in the yard there were woodsheds, and all the sheds had to be broken down and the wood taken into the basement, if anyone had wood there.
Then they began to prepare bomb shelters. That is, even before the blockade was completely closed, there was a very good organization of defense, they set up guards, because at first the planes were dropping leaflets and there were spies in Leningrad.
My mother handed one over to the policeman, I don’t know for what reason; she studied at a German school, and something about that man seemed suspicious to her.
They said on the radio that people should be careful, a certain number of paratroopers had been dropped, or they had crossed the front line in the area of the Pulkovo Heights, for example, it could have been done there, trams reached there, and the Germans were already standing on the heights themselves, they approached very quickly.
I have a lot of impressions from the beginning of the blockade, I will probably die - I will not forget all this horror, all this is imprinted in my memory - out of the blue, they say, but here - bombs on my head.
Literally for two weeks or a month, refugees walked through Leningrad, it was scary to watch.
Carts loaded with belongings were driving, children were sitting, women were holding on to the carts. They passed very quickly somewhere to the east, they were accompanied by soldiers, but rarely, not that they walked under escort. We, teenagers, stood at the gate and looked, we were curious, sorry for them and scared.
We, Leningraders, were very conscious and prepared, we knew that very unpleasant things could happen to us and therefore everyone worked, no one ever refused any work; they came, talked and we went and did everything.
Later it started to snow, the paths from the entrances were cleared and there was no such disgrace as now. This continued all winter: everyone went out as much as they could, but some path was cleared to the gate in order to get out.
Have you ever participated in the construction of fortifications around the city?
No, it's just older age. We were sent out to duty at the gates, and we threw lighters from the roof.
The worst thing began after September 8, because there were a lot of fires. (Checks the book) For example, 6,327 incendiary bombs were dropped on the Moscow, Krasnogvardeisky and Smolninsky districts in one day.
At night, I remember, we were on duty on the roof and from our Oktyabrsky district, from Sadovaya Street, the glow of fires was visible. The group climbed into the attic and watched as the Badayev warehouses burned, it was clear. Will you forget this?
The rations were immediately reduced, because these were the main warehouses, right on the ninth or tenth, and from the twelfth, workers already received 300 grams, children 300 grams, and dependents 250 grams, this was the second reduction, the cards were just issued. Then the terrible bombing was the first high-explosive bombs.
On Nevsky, a house collapsed, and here, in our area on Lermontovsky Prospekt, a six-story building collapsed to the ground, only one wall remained standing, covered with wallpaper, in the corner there was a table and some furniture.
Already then, in September, famine began. Life was scary. My mother was a competent, energetic woman, and she understood that we were hungry, our family was large, and what we were doing. In the morning we left the children alone, and we took pillowcases and walked outside the Moscow Gate, there were cabbage fields there. The cabbage had already been harvested, and we walked around collecting the remaining leaves and stalks.
It was very cold at the beginning of October, and we went there until it was knee-deep in snow. Somewhere, my mother got a barrel, and we put all these leaves, we came across beet tops, and we put them together and made this kind of stuff, this stuff saved us.
The third reduction in rations was on November 20: workers 250 grams, children, employees, dependents - 125 grams, and so it was until the opening of the Road of Life, until February. Immediately then they increased the amount of bread to 400 grams for workers, 300 grams for children and 250 grams for dependents.
Then workers began to receive 500 grams, employees 400, children and dependents 300, this is already February 11. They began to evacuate then, they suggested to my mother that they take us out too, they didn’t want to leave the children in the city, because they understood that the war would still last.
Mom had an official summons to pack her things for three days of travel, no more. Cars drove up and took them away; the Vorobievs then left. On this day we are sitting on bundles, my backpack is from a pillowcase, Sergei (younger brother) has just left, and Tanya is one year old, she is in my arms, we are sitting in the kitchen and my mother suddenly says - Lida, undress, undress the guys, we are not going anywhere.
A car arrived, a man in a paramilitary uniform began to swear, how is it possible, you will ruin your children. And she told him - I will ruin the children on the road.
And I did the right thing, I think. She would have lost us all, two in her arms, but what about me? Vera is six years old.
Please tell us what the mood was in the city during the first winter of the siege.
Our radio broadcast: do not fall for the propaganda leaflets, do not read. There was such a blockade leaflet that was etched in my memory for the rest of my life, the text there was “St. Petersburg ladies, don’t dig holes,” it’s about the trenches, I don’t remember in full.
It's amazing how everyone pulled together then. We have a small square yard - everyone was friends, they went out to do whatever work they needed and the mood was patriotic. Then in schools we were taught to love our Motherland, to be patriots, even before the war.
Then a terrible famine began, because in the fall and winter we had food, but here we had nothing at all. Then came the difficult everyday life of the blockade.
During the bombing, the pipes burst, the water was turned off everywhere, and all winter we walked from Sadovaya to the Neva for water, with a sled, the sled turned over, returned or went home with tears, and carried buckets in our hands. My mother and I went together.
We had the Fontanka River nearby, and on the radio they forbade taking water from there because there were a lot of hospitals there that were draining water. Whenever possible, we climbed onto the roof to collect snow, this was all winter, and we tried to bring it from the Neva for drinking.
On the Neva it was like this: we walked through Teatralnaya Square, through Truda Square and at the Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge there was a descent. The descent, of course, was icy because the water was spilling, so we had to climb.
And there was an ice hole there, I don’t know who supported it, we came without any tools, we could barely walk. During the bombing, all the windows were blown out, they covered the windows with plywood, oilcloth, blankets, and pillows.
Then severe frosts came in the winter of 41-42, and we all moved into the kitchen, it had no windows and there was a large stove, but there was nothing to heat it with, we ran out of wood, even though we had a shed and a pantry on the stairs, full firewood
The grunt has run out - what to do? My father went to the dacha that we rented in Kolomyagi. He knew that a cow had been slaughtered there in the fall and the skin had been hung in the attic, and he brought this skin, and it saved us.
They all ate. The belts were cooked. There were soles - they weren’t cooked, because then there was nothing to wear, but belts - yes. Good belts, soldier's ones, they are very tasty.
We scorched that skin on the stove, peeled it and cooked it, soaked it in the evening and made jelly, my mother had a supply of bay leaves, we put it there - it was delicious! But it was completely black, this jelly, because it was cow hair, the coals remained from the scorching.
My father was near Leningrad from the very beginning, at the Pulkovo Heights at the headquarters, he was shell-shocked, he came to visit me and told me to tell my mother that the winter would be hard, that after the hospital he would come back in a couple of days.
The last time before the war he worked at a factory, and there he ordered us a potbelly stove and stove. It still stands in my dacha. He brought it, and we cooked everything on this potbelly stove, it was our salvation, because people adapted anything for stoves - there were almost no metal barrels then, and they made them out of everything.
After they started bombing with high-explosive bombs, the sewage system stopped working, and we had to take out a bucket every day. We lived in the kitchen then, we pulled out beds there and the little ones sat in bed against the wall all the time, and my mother and I, willy-nilly, had to do everything, go out. We had a toilet in the kitchen, in the corner.
There was no bathroom. There were no windows in the kitchen, so we moved there, and the lighting came from the hallway, there was a large window there, and in the evening the lantern was already lit. And our entire sewer pipe was filled with such red deposits of ice and sewage. In the spring, when warming began, it all had to be chipped off and taken out. This is how we lived.
This is the spring of '42. There was still a lot of snow, and there was an order - the entire population from 16 to 60 years old should go out to clear the city of snow.
When we went to the Neva for water and there were queues, even for bread with coupons there were queues, and it was very scary to walk, we walked together, because they tore the bread out of our hands and ate it right there. You go to the Neva for water - corpses are lying everywhere.
This is where they started taking 17-year-old girls to the NPVO. A truck was driving around everywhere, and the girls were picking up these frozen corpses and taking them away. Once, after the war, it flashed in a film magazine about such a place, it was on Maklino.
And in Kolomyagi it was on Akkuratova Street, near Stepan Skvortsov’s psychiatric hospital, and they were also stacked almost to the roof.
Before the war, we rented a dacha in Kolomyagi for two years, and the owner of this dacha, Aunt Liza Kayakina, sent her son with an offer for us to move there. He came on foot, across the whole city, and we gathered on the same day.
He came with a big sled, we had two sleds, and we loaded up and went, this is approximately the beginning of March. The children were on a sled and the three of us were dragging this sled, and there was also luggage, we had to take something. My father went to work somewhere, and my mother and I went to see him off.
Why? Cannibalism began.
And in Kolomyagi I knew a family who was doing this, they were quite healthy, they were tried later, after the war.
Our biggest fear was being eaten. They mostly cut out the liver, because the rest was skin and bones; I saw it all with my own eyes. Aunt Lisa had a cow, and that’s why she invited us: to save us and keep us safe, they had already climbed up to it, dismantled the roof, they would have killed them, of course, because of this cow.
We arrived, the cow was hanging on ropes tied to the ceiling. She still had some feed left, and they began to milk the cow, but she did not milk well, because I was also hungry.
Aunt Lisa sent me across the road to a neighbor, she had a son, they were very hungry, the boy no longer got out of bed, and I brought him a little, 100 grams of milk. Basically, she ate her son. I came and asked, and she said - he’s not there, he’s gone. Where could he go, he could no longer stand. I smell meat and steam is pouring out.
In the spring we went to the vegetable storehouse and dug ditches where spoiled food, potatoes and carrots were buried before the war.
The ground was still frozen, but it was already possible to dig out this rotten mess, mostly potatoes, and when we came across carrots, we considered ourselves very lucky, because carrots smell better, potatoes are just rotten and that’s all.
They started eating this. Aunt Lisa had stored up a lot of duranda for the cow since the fall, we mixed potatoes and bran with it, and it was a feast, pancakes, flatbreads were baked without oil, just on the stove.
There was a lot of dystrophy. I was not greedy for food, but Vera, Sergei and Tatyana loved to eat and endured hunger much more difficult. Mom divided everything very precisely, cutting the bread into centimeter-by-centimeter pieces. Spring began - everyone ate, and Tanya had second-degree dystrophy, and Vera had the very last, third, and yellow spots had already begun to appear on her body.
That’s how we overwintered, and in the spring we were given a piece of land, whatever seeds we planted, and in general, we survived. We also had duranda, do you know what it is? Grain waste pressed into circles, seeded duranda is very tasty, like halva. This was given to us piece by piece, like candy, to chew. It took a long, long time to chew.
1942 - we ate everything: quinoa, plantain, whatever grass grew - we ate everything, and what we didn’t eat we salted. We planted a lot of fodder beets and found seeds. They ate it raw, boiled, and with tops - in every way.
All the tops went into a barrel for pickling, we didn’t distinguish where Aunt Lisa’s was, where ours were - everything was common, that’s how we lived. In the fall I went to school, my mother said: hunger is not hunger, go study.
Even at school, during the big break, they gave us a vegetable slop and 50 grams of bread, it was called a bun, but now, of course, no one would call it that.
We studied hard the teachers were all exhausted to the limit and put marks: if you walked, they’ll give you a three.
We, too, were all exhausted, we were nodding off in class, there was no light either, so we read with smokers. Smokehouses were made from any small jars, kerosene was poured in and the wick was lit - it smoked. There was never any electricity, but in the factories electricity was supplied at certain times, by the hour, only to those areas where there was no electricity.
Back in the spring of 1942, they began to break down wooden houses for heating, and in Kolomyagi they broke a lot. We were not touched because of the children, because there were so many children, and by the fall we moved to another house, one family left, evacuated, sold the house. This was done by the NPVO, by demolishing houses, by special teams, mostly women.
In the spring we were told that we would not take exams, if we got C grades, we would be promoted to the next grade.
Classes stopped in April '43.
I had a friend in Kolomyaga, Lyusya Smolina, she helped me get a job at a bakery. The work there is very hard, without electricity - everything is done by hand.
Electricity was supplied to the bread ovens at a certain time, and everything else - kneading, slicing, forming - everything was done by hand, several people stood at a time teenagers and kneaded with their hands, the ribs of the palms were all covered with solid calluses.
The kettles with dough were also transported by hand, but they are heavy, I can’t say for sure now, but almost 500 kilograms.
I went to work for the first time at night, the shifts were like this: from 8 pm to 8 am, you rest for a day, the next shift you work a day from 8 am to 8 pm.
The first time I came home from my shift, my mother dragged me home, I got there and fell near the fence, I don’t remember further, I woke up already in bed.
Then you get involved you get used to everything, Certainly, but I worked there to the point that I became dystrophic. Once you inhale this air, you won’t be able to eat anymore.
It happened that the voltage dropped and the pin inside the oven on which the bread pans stood did not spin, but it could burn out! And no one will look whether there is electricity or what, will be court-martialed.
And what we did - near the stove there was a lever with a long handle, we hang on this lever for 5-6 people so that the pin turns.
At first I was a student, then an assistant. There, at the factory, I joined the Komsomol, people were in the right mood, everyone stick together.
Before the blockade was lifted, on December 3, there was an incident - a shell hit a tram in the Vyborg region, 97 people were injured, it was morning, people were going to the plant, and then almost our entire shift did not show up.
I was working the night shift at the time, and in the morning they rounded us up and told everyone that they wouldn’t let us leave the factory, we would all remain at our workplaces, in a barracks-like situation. In the evening they were sent home because another shift had arrived, they were working incomprehensibly, but you can’t leave people without bread!
There were many military units around, I don’t know for sure, but, in my opinion, we supplied them too. So, we were allowed to go home for less than a full day to get a change of clothes and return, and on December 12 we were transferred to barracks status.
I was there for 3 or 4 months, we slept on soldier’s bunks, two of us working, two of us sleeping. Even before all this, in the winter I went to evening school at the Pediatric Institute, but it was all in fits and starts, my knowledge was very poor, and when I entered technical school after the war, it was very difficult for me, I had no fundamental knowledge.
Please tell us about the mood in the city, whether there was cultural life.
I know about Shostakovich’s concert in 1943. Then the Germans switched to massive shelling, since the fall, the Germans felt that they were losing, well, that’s what we thought, of course.
We lived hungry, and after the war there was still hunger, and dystrophy was treated, and cards, all that. The people behaved very well, now people have become envious and unfriendly, this was not the case with us. And they shared - you yourself are hungry, and you give a piece.
I remember, I was walking home from work with bread, and a person met me - I couldn’t tell whether it was a woman or a man, they dressed so that they were warm. She looks at me I gave a piece to her.
It’s not because I’m so good, everyone behaved that way basically. There were, of course, thieves and so on. For example, going to a store was mortally dangerous; you could be attacked and your cards taken away.
Once the daughter of our farm manager went and her daughter and her cards disappeared. All. They saw her in the store, she came out with groceries - but no one knows where she went next.
We looked around the apartments, but what was there to take? No one has food; anything more valuable was exchanged for bread. Why did we still survive? Mom traded everything she had: jewelry, dresses, everything for bread.
Please tell us how informed you were about the course of the hostilities?
They transmitted it constantly. Only they took away everyone’s receivers, those who had radios, they took everything away. In our kitchen there was a plate and a radio. It didn’t always work, but only when something needed to be conveyed, and there were loudspeakers on the streets.
There was a large loudspeaker on Sennaya, for example, and they mostly hung on the corners, the corner of Nevsky and Sadovaya, near the Public Library. Everyone believed in our victory, everything was done for victory and for the war.
In the fall of 1943, in November-December, I was called to the personnel department and told that they were sending me to the front line with a propaganda team.
Our brigade consisted of 4 people - a party organizer and three Komsomol members, two girls, approximately 18 years old, they were already our masters, and I was 15 then, and they sent us to the front line to maintain the morale of the soldiers, to the coastal artillery and There was also an anti-aircraft unit nearby.
They brought us in a truck under a tent, assigned us to different places, and we didn’t see each other. At first they said that it was for three days, but we lived there for either 8 or 9 days, I stayed there alone, lived in a dugout.
The first night was in the commander’s dugout, and after that the anti-aircraft gunner girls took me in with them. I saw how they aimed guns at the plane, they let me go everywhere, and I was amazed that they were pointing up, but looking down at the tables.
The girls are young, 18-20 years old, not teenagers anymore. The food was good, barley and canned food, a piece of bread and tea in the morning, I came from there, and it seemed to me that I had even gained weight in those eight days (laughs).
What was I doing? I walked through the dugouts, the girls in the dugouts could stand up tall, but the men had low dugouts, you could only go in half-bent and immediately sit on the bunks, with a spruce forest on them.
There were 10-15 people in each dugout. They also work on a rotational basis - someone is constantly near the gun, the rest are resting, and on alert there is a general rise. Because of such worries, we could not leave; we bombed any moving target.
It was then that our artillery worked well, and preparations began for breaking the blockade. Finland became quiet then, they reached their old borders and stopped, the only thing left on their side was the Mannerheim Line.
There was also a case when I worked at a bakery, before the New Year of 1944. Our director took out a barrel of soybean meal or he was given more seedings separately.
They made a list at the factory of how many family members they have, who will receive some kind of edible gift. I have four dependents and myself.
And so, before the New Year, they gave out a rather large piece of gingerbread (shows with his hands the size of about an A4 sheet), probably 200 grams per person.
I still remember well how I carried it, I was supposed to have 6 servings, and they cut them off in one big piece, but I didn’t have a bag or anything. They put it on a piece of cardboard for me (I was working the day shift at the time), there was no paper, at school they wrote between the lines in books.
In general, they wrapped it in some kind of rag. I often rode on the tram bandwagon, but with this, how can you jump on the bandwagon? I went on foot I had to walk 8 kilometers. It’s evening, winter, in the dark, through Udelninsky Park, and it’s like a forest, and also on the outskirts, there was a military unit there, and there was talk that they were taking advantage of the girls. Anyone could do anything.
And all this time I carried the gingerbread in my hand, I was afraid of falling, there was snow all around, everything was covered. When we left home, we knew every time that we would leave and might not return, but the kids didn’t understand this.
Once I went to the other end of the city, to the harbor and walked back and forth all night, there was such a terrible shelling, lights were flashing, shell tracks, shrapnel whistling all around.
So, I came into the house with the gingerbread, everyone was hungry, and when they saw it, there was such joy! They, of course, were stunned, and for us it was a New Year's feast.
You left for Kolomyagi in the spring of 1942. When did you return back to the city apartment?
I returned alone in 1945, and they stayed to live there because they started a small vegetable garden there; there was still hunger in the city. But I entered the academy, I had to take courses, I had to study, and it was difficult for me to travel to Kolomyagi and back, I moved to the city. They glazed our frames and moved a woman with two children from a bombed house into our apartment.
Tell us how the city came to its senses after the blockade was broken and lifted.
They just worked. Everyone who could worked worked. There was an order to restore the city. But the return of the monuments and their release from disguise was carried out much later. Then they began to cover the bombed houses with camouflage to create the appearance of a city, to cover up the ruins.
At sixteen you are already an adult, working or studying, so everyone worked, well, except for the sick. After all, I went to the factory because of a work card, to help, to earn money, but no one will give food for free, and I didn’t eat bread in my family.
How much did the city's supply improve after the blockade was lifted?
The cards didn’t go away; they were still around after the war. But the same as in the first winter of the blockade, when they gave 125 grams of millet per decade (in the text - 12.5 grams per decade. I hope there is a typo in it, but I don’t have the opportunity to check now. - Note ss69100.) - this hasn’t happened for a long time. They also gave us lentils from military supplies.
How quickly was transport communication restored in the city?
By today's standards, when everything is automated, it is very fast, because everything was done manually, the same tram lines were repaired by hand.
For us there was great rejoicing back in 1944, in January, when the blockade was lifted. I was working the night shift, someone heard something and came and told me - it was jubilation! We didn’t live any better, the hunger was the same until the very end of the war and after that we were still hungry, but there was a breakthrough! We walked down the street and said to each other - did you know that the blockade was lifted?! Everyone was very happy, although little had changed.
On February 11, 1944, I received the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad.” Few people were given this at that time; they had only just begun to give this medal.
On May 9, 1945, celebrations, concerts, and accordionists performed spontaneously on Palace Square. People sang, read poetry, rejoiced, and there was no drinking, fighting, or anything like that, not like now.
Interview and literary processing: A. Orlova
Dok20580 reminded .On March 9, 1957, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake occurred in the Andrean Islands in Alaska. according to other sources - from 7.9 to 8.3, approx. blog author). This earthquake led to the formation of two tsunamis, with average wave heights reaching 15 m and 8 m, respectively. More than 300 people died. The earthquake was accompanied by the eruption of the Vsevidov volcano on the island of Umnak, which had been “hibernating” for about 200 years.
The consequences of the tremors affected the island of Andreanova Spit, where damage was caused to buildings, two bridges were destroyed, and cracks appeared in the roads. Even greater destruction was caused by the subsequent tsunami, which reached the Hawaiian Islands, the coasts of California, Chile and Japan. Two villages were destroyed in Hawaii, causing $5 million in damage.
And on July 9, 1958, an unusually severe disaster occurred in Lituya Bay in southeast Alaska.
In this bay, which extends more than 11 km into the land, geologist D. Miller discovered a difference in the age of trees on the hillside surrounding the bay. Based on tree rings, he estimated that over the past 100 years, waves with maximum heights of several hundred meters have occurred in the bay at least four times. Miller's conclusions were viewed with great distrust. And then on July 9, 1958, a strong earthquake occurred on the Fairweather fault north of the bay, causing the destruction of buildings, the collapse of the coast, and the formation of numerous cracks. And a huge landslide on the mountainside above the bay caused a wave of record height (524 meters!!!), which rolled at a speed of 160 km/h across the narrow, fjord-like bay.
A huge mass of ice, stones and earth (volume of about 300 million cubic meters) rushed down from the glacier, exposing the mountain slopes. The earthquake destroyed numerous buildings, cracks appeared in the ground, and the coastline slid. The moving mass fell on the northern part of the bay, filled it up, and then crawled onto the opposite slope of the mountain, tearing off its forest cover to a height of more than three hundred meters. The landslide generated a giant wave that literally swept Lituya Bay towards the ocean. The wave was so great that it swept entirely over the entire sandbank at the mouth of the bay.
Eyewitnesses to the disaster were people on board the ships that dropped anchor in the bay. The terrible shock threw them all out of their beds. Jumping to their feet, they could not believe their eyes: the sea rose. “Giant landslides, raising clouds of dust and snow in their path, began to run along the slopes of the mountains. Soon their attention was attracted by an absolutely fantastic sight: the mass of ice of the Lituya glacier, located far to the north and usually hidden from view by the peak that rises at the entrance to the bay, seemed to rise above the mountains and then majestically collapse into the waters of the inner bay. It all looked like some kind of nightmare. In front of the shocked people's eyes, a huge wave rose up, which swallowed the foot of the northern mountain. After that, it swept across the bay, tearing trees off the mountain slopes ; having fallen like a mountain of water onto the island of Cenotaph... rolled over the highest point of the island, rising 50 m above sea level. This entire mass suddenly plunged into the waters of the narrow bay, causing a huge wave, the height of which, apparently, reached 17-35 m. the energy was so great that the wave rushed furiously across the bay, sweeping the mountain slopes.In the inner basin, the impact of the wave on the shore was probably very strong. The slopes of the northern mountains facing the bay were bare: where dense forest had once grown, there were now bare rocks; This pattern was observed at altitudes of up to 600 meters.
One longboat was lifted high, easily carried across the sandbank and dropped into the ocean. At that moment, when the longboat was carried over the sandbank, the fishermen on it saw standing trees underneath them. The wave literally threw people across the island into the open sea. During a nightmare ride on a giant wave, the boat pounded against trees and debris. The longboat sank, but the fishermen miraculously survived and were rescued two hours later. Of the other two longboats, one successfully withstood the wave, but the other sank, and the people on it went missing.
Miller found that the trees growing at the upper edge of the exposed area, just below 600 m above the bay, were bent and broken, their fallen trunks pointing towards the top of the mountain, but the roots were not torn from the soil. Something pushed these trees up. The enormous force that accomplished this could not have been anything other than the top of a gigantic wave that swept over the mountain that July evening in 1958.
It's interesting to live in the North Pacific Ring of Fire, isn't it?
8-)))
The largest tsunami wave in history was recorded in Lituya Bay, which is located in the American state of Alaska, on a narrow strip of US territory, “pressed” to the Pacific Ocean by Canada. On the evening of July 9, 1958, as a result of an earthquake and landslide in the Fairweather fault, 30.6 million cubic meters fell from the rocks on the northeastern shore of the bay into the water. m of hard rock. This huge mass of stones sank into the water from a height of approximately 910 meters in Gilbert Bay, the southwestern coast of which was hit by a powerful tsunami resulting from the cataclysm. The impact of the wave was so strong that the element actually destroyed a strip of land, the La Gaussi spit, which separates the bay from the rest of Lituya Bay.
The wave then moved along the entire length of the bay through La Gaussie Shoal and entered the Gulf of Alaska. The powerful impact of the water mass destroyed all vegetation up to a height of 524 meters above sea level. Millions of trees were uprooted and washed into the ocean. This wave is a record for the height of its front in the entire history of observations.
Lituya Bay is a fairly narrow strip of water on the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Alaska. Near the shores of the bay, the water surface is covered with ice. The length of the bay is 11.3 km, width 3.2 km. The maximum depth here is 219 meters, but on the isthmus that separates the bay from the ocean, you can almost reach the bottom with your hand - only 9.7 meters. The isthmus line connects the top of La Gaussie Spit with Harbor Point.
The Fairweather Fault runs along the northeastern end of Lituya Bay and, together with the bay strip, forms a T-shaped depression in the earth's surface. Centuries of glacial movement along a relatively small section of the fault created a depression known as the Fairweather Trench. The Lituya Glacier and North Grillon Glacier fill the Fairweather Basin with ice, which then flows southwest along Lituya Bay. In the places where the Lituya glacier and the Northern Grillon glacier reach the surface of the water, Gilbert Bay and Grillon Bay are located, respectively.
What happened on July 9, 1958? That evening, a huge rock fell into the water from a steep cliff overlooking the northeastern shore of Gilbert Bay. The collapse area is marked in red on the map. The impact of an incredible mass of stones from a very high altitude caused an unprecedented tsunami, which wiped out from the face of the earth all life that was located along the entire coast of Lituya Bay right up to the La Gaussi spit. After the wave passed along both shores of the bay, there was not only no vegetation left, but even no soil; there was bare rock on the surface of the shore. The damaged area is shown in yellow on the map. The numbers along the shore of the bay indicate the height above sea level of the edge of the damaged land area and approximately correspond to the height of the wave that passed here.
Eyewitness accounts
Mr. Howard J. Ulrich, on his yacht, which is called "Edri", entered the waters of Lituya Bay about eight in the evening and anchored in 9 meters of water in a small cove on the southern shore. Howard says that suddenly the yacht began to rock violently. He ran out onto the deck and saw how the rocks in the northeastern part of the bay began to move due to the earthquake, and a huge block of rock began to fall into the water. About two and a half minutes after the earthquake, he heard a deafening sound from the destruction of rock.
“We definitely saw that the wave came from Gilbert Bay, just before the earthquake ended. But at first it was not a wave. At first it was more like an explosion, as if the glacier was splitting into pieces. A wave rose from the surface of the water; At first it was almost invisible, who would have thought that later the water would rise to a height of half a kilometer.”
Ulrich said that he observed the entire process of the development of the wave, which reached their yacht in a very short time - something like two and a half to three minutes from the time it could first be noticed. “Since we didn’t want to lose the anchor, we pulled out the entire anchor chain (about 72 meters) and started the engine. Halfway between the northeastern edge of Lituya Bay and Cenotaf Island, a thirty-meter-high wall of water could be seen that stretched from one shore to the other. When the wave approached the northern part of the island, it split into two parts, but after passing the southern part of the island, the wave became one again. It was smooth, only there was a small ridge on top. When this mountain of water approached our yacht, its front was quite steep, and its height was from 15 to 20 meters. Before the wave arrived at the place where our yacht was located, we did not feel any drop in water or other changes, with the exception of a slight vibration that was transmitted through the water from tectonic processes that began to operate during the earthquake. As soon as the wave approached us and began to lift our yacht, the anchor chain crackled violently. The yacht was carried towards the southern shore and then, on the return stroke of the wave, towards the center of the bay. The top of the wave was not very wide, from 7 to 15 meters, and the trailing front was less steep than the leading one.
As the giant wave swept past us, the surface of the water returned to its normal level, but we could see a lot of turbulence around the yacht, as well as random waves six meters high that moved from one side of the bay to the other. These waves did not create any noticeable movement of water from the mouth of the bay to its northeastern part and back.
After 25-30 minutes the surface of the bay calmed down. Near the banks one could see many logs, branches and uprooted trees. All this rubbish slowly drifted towards the center of Lituya Bay and towards its mouth.” In fact, during the entire incident, Ulrich did not lose control of the yacht. When the Edri approached the entrance to the bay at 23.00, a normal current could be observed there, which is usually caused by the daily ebb of ocean water.
Other eyewitnesses to the disaster, the Swenson couple on a yacht called the Badger, entered Lituya Bay around nine in the evening. First, their ship approached Cenotaf Island, and then returned to Anchorage Bay on the northern shore of the bay, not far from its mouth (see map). The Svensons anchored at a depth of about seven meters and went to bed. William Swenson's sleep was interrupted by strong vibrations from the yacht's hull. He ran into the control room and began to time what was happening. A little over a minute after William first felt the vibration, and probably just before the end of the earthquake, he looked towards the northeastern part of the bay, which was visible against the backdrop of Cenotaph Island. The traveler saw what he at first took to be the Lituya glacier, which “rose into the air and began to move towards the observer. It seemed that this mass was solid, but it jumped and swayed. Large pieces of ice were constantly falling into the water in front of this block.” After a short time, “the glacier disappeared from sight, instead of it a large wave appeared in that place and went in the direction of the La Gaussi spit, just where our yacht was anchored.” In addition, Svenson noticed that the wave flooded the shore at a very noticeable height.
When the wave passed Cenotaf Island, its height was about 15 meters in the center of the bay and gradually decreased near the shores. She passed the island approximately two and a half minutes after she was first seen, and reached the Badger yacht another eleven and a half minutes later (approximately). Before the wave arrived, William, like Howard Ulrich, did not notice any drop in water level or any turbulent phenomena.
The Badger yacht, which was still anchored, was lifted by a wave and carried towards the La Gaussy spit. The stern of the yacht was below the crest of the wave, so that the position of the vessel resembled a surfboard. Svenson looked at that moment at the place where the trees growing on the La Gaussy spit should have been visible. At that moment they were hidden by water. William noted that above the tops of the trees there was a layer of water equal to approximately two times the length of his yacht, about 25 meters. Having passed the La Gaussi spit, the wave subsided very quickly. In the place where Swenson's yacht was moored, the water level began to drop, and the ship hit the bottom of the bay, remaining afloat not far from the shore. 3-4 minutes after the impact, Swenson saw that water continued to flow over the La Gaussie Spit, carrying logs and other debris from forest vegetation. He wasn't sure it wasn't a second wave that could have carried the yacht across the spit into the Gulf of Alaska. Therefore, the Swenson couple left their yacht, moving onto a small boat, from which they were picked up by a fishing boat a couple of hours later.
There was a third vessel in Lituya Bay at the time of the incident. It was anchored at the entrance to the bay and was sunk by a huge wave. None of the people on board survived, two were (presumably) killed.
Fresh research
Before the events described here took place, US Geological Survey employee Don Miller collected eyewitness accounts of similar disasters in Lituya Bay. He documented at least four instances of large waves occurring here well before July 1958. Presumably, similar tsunamis occurred here in 1936, 1899, 1874 and 1853 (or 1854). All these waves were quite high, but traces of their impact on the shores of the bay were eliminated by the July wave of 1958. Miller was in Alaska when the tsunami occurred in Lituya Bay, and flew to the site of the cataclysm immediately the next day, which gave him the opportunity to study fresh traces of the phenomenon.
Miller in his report concluded that in Lituya Bay there are conditions for the occurrence of tsunamis several times per century. I wonder when the next one will happen?
On March 9, 1957, an earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale occurred in the Andrean Islands in Alaska. This earthquake led to the formation of two tsunamis, with average wave heights reaching 15 m and 8 m, respectively. More than 300 people died. The earthquake was accompanied by the eruption of the Vsevidov volcano on the island of Umnak, which had been “hibernating” for about 200 years.
The consequences of the tremors affected the island of Andrianova Spit, where damage was caused to buildings, two bridges were destroyed, and cracks appeared in the roads. Even greater destruction was caused by the subsequent tsunami, which reached the Hawaiian Islands, the coasts of California, Chile and Japan. Two villages were destroyed in Hawaii, causing $5 million in damage.
Tsunami in Lituya Bay in 1958
On July 9, 1958, an unusually severe disaster occurred in Lituya Bay in southeastern Alaska. In this bay, which extends more than 11 km into the land, geologist D. Miller discovered a difference in the age of trees on the hillside surrounding the bay. Based on tree rings, he estimated that over the past 100 years, waves with maximum heights of several hundred meters have occurred in the bay at least four times. Miller's conclusions were viewed with great distrust. And then on July 9, 1958, a strong earthquake occurred on the Fairweather fault north of the bay, causing the destruction of buildings, the collapse of the coast, and the formation of numerous cracks. And a huge landslide on the mountainside above the bay caused a wave of record height (524 m), which swept through the narrow, fjord-like bay at a speed of 160 km/h.
Aerial photo of destructive landslides in Anchorage, Graben, L Street. Photo
A. Grantz. Anchorage in Cook County, Alaska.
A huge mass of ice, stones and earth (volume of about 300 million cubic meters) rushed down from the glacier, exposing the mountain slopes. The earthquake destroyed numerous buildings, cracks appeared in the ground, and the coastline slid. The moving mass fell on the northern part of the bay, filled it up, and then crawled onto the opposite slope of the mountain, tearing off the forest cover from it to a height of more than three hundred meters. The landslide generated a giant wave that literally swept Lituya Bay towards the ocean. The wave was so great that it swept entirely over the entire sandbank at the mouth of the bay.
Eyewitnesses to the disaster were people on board the ships that dropped anchor in the bay. The terrible shock threw them all out of their beds. Jumping to their feet, they could not believe their eyes: the sea rose. “Giant landslides, raising clouds of dust and snow in their path, began to run along the slopes of the mountains. Soon their attention was attracted by an absolutely fantastic sight: the mass of ice of the Lituya glacier, located far to the north and usually hidden from view by the peak that rises at the entrance to the bay, seemed to rise above the mountains and then majestically collapsed into the waters of the inner bay. It all looked like some kind of nightmare. In front of the shocked people's eyes, a huge wave rose up and swallowed the foot of the northern mountain. After that, it swept across the bay, tearing trees off the mountain slopes ; having fallen like a mountain of water onto the island of Cenotaph... rolled over the highest point of the island, rising 50 m above sea level. This entire mass suddenly plunged into the waters of the narrow bay, causing a huge wave, the height of which, apparently, reached 17-35 m. the energy was so great that the wave rushed furiously across the bay, sweeping the mountain slopes.In the inner basin, the impact of the wave on the shore was probably very strong. The slopes of the northern mountains facing the bay were bare: where there had once been dense forest there were now bare rocks; This pattern was observed at altitudes of up to 600 meters.
One longboat was lifted high, easily carried across the sandbar and dropped into the ocean. At that moment, when the longboat was carried over the sandbank, the fishermen on it saw standing trees beneath them. The wave literally threw people across the island into the open sea. During a nightmare ride on a giant wave, the boat pounded against trees and debris. The longboat sank, but the fishermen miraculously survived and were rescued two hours later. Of the other two longboats, one safely withstood the wave, but the other sank, and the people on it went missing.
Miller found that the trees growing at the upper edge of the exposed area, just below 600 m above the bay, were bent and broken, their fallen trunks pointing towards the top of the mountain, but the roots were not torn from the soil. Something pushed these trees up. The enormous force that accomplished this could not be anything other than the top of a gigantic wave that swept over the mountain on that July evening in 1958.”
On March 9, 1957, an earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale occurred in the Andrean Islands in Alaska. This earthquake led to the formation of two tsunamis, with average wave heights reaching 15 m and 8 m, respectively. More than 300 people died. The earthquake was accompanied by the eruption of the Vsevidov volcano on the island of Umnak, which had been “hibernating” for about 200 years.
The consequences of the tremors affected the island of Andrianova Spit, where damage was caused to buildings, two bridges were destroyed, and cracks appeared in the roads. Even greater destruction was caused by the subsequent tsunami, which reached the Hawaiian Islands, the coasts of California, Chile and Japan. Two villages were destroyed in Hawaii, causing $5 million in damage.
Tsunami in Lituya Bay in 1958
On July 9, 1958, an unusually severe disaster occurred in Lituya Bay in southeastern Alaska. In this bay, which extends more than 11 km into the land, geologist D. Miller discovered a difference in the age of trees on the hillside surrounding the bay. Based on tree rings, he estimated that over the past 100 years, waves with maximum heights of several hundred meters have occurred in the bay at least four times. Miller's conclusions were viewed with great distrust. And then on July 9, 1958, a strong earthquake occurred on the Fairweather fault north of the bay, causing the destruction of buildings, the collapse of the coast, and the formation of numerous cracks. And a huge landslide on the mountainside above the bay caused a wave of record height (524 m), which swept through the narrow, fjord-like bay at a speed of 160 km/h.
Aerial photo of destructive landslides in Anchorage, Graben, L Street. Photo
A. Grantz. Anchorage in Cook County, Alaska.
A huge mass of ice, stones and earth (volume of about 300 million cubic meters) rushed down from the glacier, exposing the mountain slopes. The earthquake destroyed numerous buildings, cracks appeared in the ground, and the coastline slid. The moving mass fell on the northern part of the bay, filled it up, and then crawled onto the opposite slope of the mountain, tearing off the forest cover from it to a height of more than three hundred meters. The landslide generated a giant wave that literally swept Lituya Bay towards the ocean. The wave was so great that it swept entirely over the entire sandbank at the mouth of the bay.
Eyewitnesses to the disaster were people on board the ships that dropped anchor in the bay. The terrible shock threw them all out of their beds. Jumping to their feet, they could not believe their eyes: the sea rose. “Giant landslides, raising clouds of dust and snow in their path, began to run along the slopes of the mountains. Soon their attention was attracted by an absolutely fantastic sight: the mass of ice of the Lituya glacier, located far to the north and usually hidden from view by the peak that rises at the entrance to the bay, seemed to rise above the mountains and then majestically collapsed into the waters of the inner bay. It all looked like some kind of nightmare. In front of the shocked people's eyes, a huge wave rose up and swallowed the foot of the northern mountain. After that, it swept across the bay, tearing trees off the mountain slopes ; having fallen like a mountain of water onto the island of Cenotaph... rolled over the highest point of the island, rising 50 m above sea level. This entire mass suddenly plunged into the waters of the narrow bay, causing a huge wave, the height of which, apparently, reached 17-35 m. the energy was so great that the wave rushed furiously across the bay, sweeping the mountain slopes.In the inner basin, the impact of the wave on the shore was probably very strong. The slopes of the northern mountains facing the bay were bare: where there had once been dense forest there were now bare rocks; This pattern was observed at altitudes of up to 600 meters.
One longboat was lifted high, easily carried across the sandbar and dropped into the ocean. At that moment, when the longboat was carried over the sandbank, the fishermen on it saw standing trees beneath them. The wave literally threw people across the island into the open sea. During a nightmare ride on a giant wave, the boat pounded against trees and debris. The longboat sank, but the fishermen miraculously survived and were rescued two hours later. Of the other two longboats, one safely withstood the wave, but the other sank, and the people on it went missing.
Miller found that the trees growing at the upper edge of the exposed area, just below 600 m above the bay, were bent and broken, their fallen trunks pointing towards the top of the mountain, but the roots were not torn from the soil. Something pushed these trees up. The enormous force that accomplished this could not be anything other than the top of a gigantic wave that swept over the mountain on that July evening in 1958.”